Living with COVID plan sets out timetable for ending regulation in England

The Government has published its COVID-19 Response Living with COVID-19 plan, which sets out a timetable to replace regulations and requirements in England and with public health measures and guidance.  This follows the Prime Minister's statement yesterday, 21 February.

The precise impact on adult social care providers and staff will become clearer when we receive sector-specific guidance. The Homecare Association is in contact with policymakers to obtain clarification of a number of issues, including self-isolation and asymptomatic testing.

The last domestic restrictions will be removed for the public as follows:

From 21 February:

Education

● Removal of guidance for staff and students in most education and childcare settings to undertake twice weekly asymptomatic testing.

Self-isolation

From 24 February:

● Removal of the legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive test. Adults and
children who test positive will continue to be advised to stay at home and avoid contact with other people for at least 5 full days and then continue to follow the
guidance until they have received 2 negative test results on consecutive days. 

There will be specific guidance for staff in adult social care, healthcare, and prisons and places of detention.

● Fully vaccinated close contacts and those aged under 18 will no longer be asked to test daily for 7 days, and the legal requirement for close contacts who are not fully vaccinated to self-isolate will be removed.

● Self-isolation support payments, national funding for practical support and the medicine delivery service will no longer be available.

● Routine contact tracing will end. Contacts will no longer be required to self-isolate or advised to take daily tests.

● The legal obligation for individuals to tell their employers when they are required to self-isolate will end.

From 24 March will:

● Removal of the COVID-19 provisions within the Statutory Sick Pay and Employment
and Support Allowance regulations.  Previous rules will apply.

Testing and COVID-status

From 1 April:

● Removal of current guidance on voluntary COVID-status certification in domestic
settings and ending of recommendation that certain venues use the NHS COVID
Pass.

● Updating of guidance setting out the ongoing steps that people with COVID-19 should take to minimise contact with other people, aligning with changes to testing.

● Free symptomatic and asymptomatic testing for the public in England will end. UKHSA will cap the number of tests people can order beforehand. The Government is working with retailers to establish a private market for tests.

From 1 April, there will be limited ongoing free testing:

a. Limited symptomatic testing available for a small number of at-risk groups - the Government will set out further details on which groups will be eligible.

b. Free symptomatic testing will remain available to social care staff.

Advice to businesses

The Government will:

● Consolidate guidance to the public and businesses, in line with public health advice.

● Remove the health and safety requirement for every employer to explicitly consider COVID-19 in their risk assessments.

● Replace the existing set of ‘Working Safely’ guidance with new public health 
Guidance.

Ventilation

The Government will continue to promote and support good ventilation. Employers
and businesses should continue identifying poorly ventilated spaces and take steps
to improve fresh air flow. Local authorities can use their allocations from the £60 million Adult Social Care Omicron Support Fund, at their discretion, to audit and improve fresh air in adult social care.
 

Vaccination

People will continue to be advised to adopt safer behaviours to reduce the risk of infection, to protect those who are vulnerable.

Subject to JCVI advice, further vaccinations (boosters) may be recommended for people who are most vulnerable to serious outcomes from COVID-19 this autumn and, ahead of that, a spring booster for groups JCVI consider to be at particularly high risk.  For more, see Health and Social Care Secretary's statement and JCVI's press release on Spring booster.

Adult social care

The Government will continue to support the adult social care sector with:

a. Supporting and encouraging the take-up of vaccines amongst care recipients
and staff, including any further doses that may be recommended by JCVI for
COVID-19 and other infections;

b. Guidance on precautions for visitors and workers in adult social care; and

c. Providing access to free PPE to the end of March 2023 or until the UK IPC
guidance on PPE usage for COVID-19 is amended or superseded (whichever is sooner).

By 1 April the Government will publish updated IPC guidance to replace current COVID-19 IPC guidance for care homes, home care and other adult social care services.

The Government will continue to work with local authorities and care providers on the response to outbreaks in care settings and manage local workforce pressures.

Health inequalities

The Government will continue to support communities with lower rates of COVID-19 vaccine uptake, particularly in areas of deprivation and for ethnic minority groups.

Maintaining resilience in health and social care

The NHS will continue to monitor demand and keep interventions used during the pandemic to reduce pressure on acute services, including maximising hospital patient discharges and making greater use of hospital at home services, under review and deploy them as necessary.

Local authorities will continue with contingency plans for maintaining care services in the event of acute workforce supply challenges, or in the last resort using Local Resilience Forums (LRFs).

The Government intends to continue to work closely with the health and care sectors to identify and understand capacity risks, in the event of another challenging winter 
and/or new variant of concern.

The plan will be supported by changes in guidance over the coming weeks, including that relating to adult social care, which will contain more details on implementation. There will also be further consultations and announcements due on current consultations. 

We will inform members of developments, via our email alerts.